Credit: The Associated Press

A visitors looks at the painting ''After Lunch" (La Pergola),1868, by Silvestro Lega, at the Orangerie Museum in Paris, today.

PARIS — Years before Impressionism — the influential Paris-based art movement — began, a similar style of painting capturing colorful impressions of light may have existed in Italy, according to a new exhibit.

The show at Paris' Orangery museum displays works from 1860s Florence with vivid, dappled light — in a strikingly similar way to famed painters like Claude Monet from the 1870s.

The movement was called "Macchiaioli," after the Italian for "stain," to evoke splashes of light in the painting.